


fireworks

by izzylizardborn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, New Year's Eve, Post-The Raven King, The Raven King Spoilers, general silliness and boys being Super in love :')
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 15:24:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9241460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzylizardborn/pseuds/izzylizardborn
Summary: Adam and Ronan spend New Year's Eve together at the Barns, and it's a dream come true.





	

Historically, Adam didn’t love New Year’s Eve. 

He could appreciate it, in theory, as a landmark between the past and the future, an opportunity to be hopeful and make change. It was just that, in practice, New Year’s was for other people. 

The things that mattered in his life weren’t the things he could change at 12:01 on January 1st with determination and a good-luck kiss. Every year, he’d go to sleep on the last page of one calendar and wake up at the start of the next in the same place – shivering in his bedroom at home, his dad a wall away, with not enough money in his pockets and too many days between him and graduation. He couldn’t even make himself enjoy the festivities. Socially-sanctioned inebriation wasn’t his idea of a good time, even if he could get out of his house to participate. When the fireworks blew at midnight, he mostly just heard the terrified howling of stray dogs who thought their world was ending. 

This year was different. 

He indulged himself for a moment. Imagined going back in time and telling Adam from a year ago that he’d be spending this New Year’s Eve watching his boyfriend, none other than Ronan Lynch, scoop poop at the Barns. 

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Ronan cried, waving off a persistent deer that had come (yet again) to investigate the pile of fireworks Ronan was working on laying out. Opal had named this deer Hurricane. Adam wasn’t sure if it was a dream deer or a real deer, but he didn’t think it mattered. Dreams were real at the Barns. 

The deer walked off, but with no particular urgency, as though humoring Ronan only because the fireworks weren’t edible.

“That’s what you get for feeding them,” Adam said, leaning against a pillar on the porch, not bothering to fight the smile on his lips. “A field full of fearless, hungry deer and… Droppings.”

Ronan scrunched his nose and flung a shovelful of ‘droppings’ out of the way. “Gonna build a fucking fence.”

Adam scoffed, because it was so obviously untrue. He’d seen the peace Ronan wore when he walked the fields with handfuls of feed, animals flocking to him like a Disney princess. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine the scene in perfectly clarity, exactly how it played out every morning – the form of Ronan relaxed and at peace, the comfortable roll of his shoulders, the way he looked uniquely soft in the golden light of sunrise. Adam knew Ronan wouldn’t give that up for anything, not even a nice clean field in which to place fireworks.

“Are you just gonna stand there and look pretty, or can you help?” Ronan asked. It was forty degrees and dropping as the sun set, but he had a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Adam appraised the situation. “Scoop poop? No.”

“Asshole,” Ronan said, but he wasn’t upset. Adam helped with dirty farm work all the time. Right now, though, Adam figured keeping Hurricane from ingesting explosives was a more worthwhile use for his presence. He took a handful of feed and offered it to the lingering deer, leading her a few yards away from Ronan.

They’d been at this for a while now. Ronan, clearing swathes of grass, pausing occasionally to set up boxes and tubes of fireworks, and then lacing them together with fuse. “How many fireworks do you _have_?” Adam asked. 

Even from this distance, he could see the way Ronan’s eyes glittered. “Enough to blow up the goddamn moon.” 

Of course. Ronan did love to dream about light. 

Really, Adam didn’t mind any of it. Didn’t mind that he was a little bit freezing, or that Ronan wanted to spend an hour and a half on New Year’s Eve doing farm work. Working the land was one of Ronan’s favorite things, so watching Ronan work the land was one of Adam’s favorite things. Even when the when the task was as unceremonious as cleaning up deer crap, Ronan was happy, in a simple way he wasn’t anywhere else. 

Ronan didn’t share that part of himself readily. His happiness was something small and newly healed, something he worked very hard to protect. Adam understood that. 

There wasn’t a day where Adam didn’t wonder what he’d done to earn the honor of being trusted with Ronan’s happiness. It was an intoxicating sort of privilege to stand witness to it, to have an open invitation to be a part of it whenever he wanted. 

Adam wanted often. 

While Ronan worked, Adam fed the deer from his palm. He used to dread winter for what the cold air did to his hands, but that was no longer an issue. Ronan dreamt him hand lotion by the bucket.

The air continued to cool, and the sun dipped below the mountains, and stars crept out as the sky grew dark. Just as Adam started considering going inside to get his scarf, Ronan announced, “Done!” and launched his shovel away like a javelin. 

Adam gave the deer a parting scratch behind her ears, brushing feed off his hand and on to the ground. 

“I think I smell like shit,” Ronan mused as they headed back inside. He didn’t seem especially concerned by the thought.

Adam grabbed him by the wrist, tugging him back toward him; Ronan made himself pliable and allowed it. He made a show of bringing Ronan’s sleeve to his nose, confirming that he didn’t smell like anything except grass and a hint of sweat. In his head, the scent read ‘sunshine,’ even though night was quickly falling. “No shittier than usual,” he allowed.

Ronan gave an exasperated shake of his head and said, “Loser,” but he held on to Adam’s hand as they went back inside, and Adam felt himself smiling again. 

Opal was in the living room, watching the TV at an unnecessarily loud volume. Ronan turned it off and announced, “Time for bed.”

Opal, despite having been obviously dozing, insisted she was watching that. Chainsaw, who was methodologically unstitching the couch cushion behind her head, crowed in support. 

“You gonna make me carry you?” Ronan asked. He made himself sound annoyed by it, but they all knew he’d do it in a heartbeat. 

“No,” Opal said, reaching toward Adam.

Ronan acted offended when Adam picked her up, eliciting a sleepy giggle from Opal. 

“Say goodnight, Opal,” Adam said.

“Goodnight, Opal,” she said. 

Ronan snorted and pulled her beanie down over her eyes. “Goodnight, punk.” She giggled again, and Adam took her upstairs, Chainsaw flapping behind them. Opal’s room was Matthew’s room, since Declan’s was short on toys and loaded with expensive breakables. Matthew, always happy to please, didn’t mind at all.

Opal was mostly asleep again by the time she was tucked in, but Adam spent an extra moment sitting on the edge of the bed, just to make sure. 

In the dark, he observed the clutter of dream things. No matter how much time he spent here, there always seemed to be more that he’d never seen before. Not all of these things had been Matthew’s – much of it had spilled over from other rooms as Ronan and Opal redistributed the magic matter of the house. His eyes fell on the toy car he’d been playing with back when Ronan had tasked him with finding aluminum foil on his birthday. The bumper had teeth marks in it, but the wheels still hummed a tune when he sild it off the nightstand. 

Had it really only been two months since Ronan kissed him? It seemed impossible – it felt like decades.

He was tentative to think it, but he supposed it was because he and Ronan were so right. Time tread more gently when things were how they were supposed to be. 

It wasn’t always perfect; they still fought, and Adam didn’t see that ever stopping. But that didn’t diminish the rightness. All that time ago – or only two months ago – Gansey had said he knew Blue was right for him because she made him quiet. Adam felt that, surely, in the peace of falling asleep next to Ronan. But it was more than that, too. He knew it was right by the way his heart freefell each time Ronan kissed him; by the way he wanted Ronan to accompany him through even the most menial tasks; by the way thoughts of their time together kept him warm while he was busy at work or school. He knew it was right by the ever-shrinking fear when he remembered the responsibility of holding Ronan’s heart in his hands, when he remembered that Ronan held his in return; by the way he knew that having this was worth so much more than the risk. 

This rightness meant love, he sometimes supposed, in the middle of the night or right at dawn, during his happiest and his saddest moments. He wasn’t sure when exactly he had started loving Ronan, or when exactly he had started falling _in love_ with Ronan. Now, it seemed like something that had always been. Now, he hoped it always would be. 

He shook his head at his wistful nostalgia. Blaming the impending new year for making him sentimental, he dropped the car in his pocket before he went back downstairs.

In the living room, Ronan was stripping off his winterwear and rifling through a hamper to find a cleanish shirt to replace it with. Adam lingered by the stairs, more than happy to observe the process without interference. 

Ronan caught him watching and gave him a smile that made his knees weak. “Pervert,” he said, just before crossing the room and pulling Adam in for a kiss. 

Adam didn’t think he’d ever tire of this. It was a matter of rightness again – of things being so right that time didn’t matter. He would’ve stood right there, kissing Ronan until dawn, without a second thought.

They had spent nights like that, more than once. He still couldn’t believe that he got to spend nights like that, whenever he wanted.

Adam wanted often.

When kissing Ronan Lynch, it was exceptionally difficult to think of anything else. But, dully, distantly, something else grabbed for his attention.

“Ronan,” Adam said.

Ronan managed back a, “What,” but gave Adam no opportunity to respond. 

It took Adam a moment to right his head again. “Ronan,” Adam repeated, pulling away. “Your phone.”

Ronan grunted, in a way that almost convinced Adam that the buzz of the phone didn’t matter. But their friends were overseas, and Adam didn’t want to ignore them, just in case of anything, so he took the liberty of sticking his hand in Ronan’s pocket and checking his phone for him. 

Ronan groaned and leaned away, plucking the phone from Adam’s hands and clicking the notification.

***

“Happy New Year!” Gansey, Blue, and Henry screamed in unison – or, as close as they could get to unison in their drunk and disorderly state. Cheeks flushed and heads pressed close together, they recorded the video as they stumbled down a busy sidewalk.

Gansey said, “I know it’s not midnight for you yet, but we’re going to sleep, so—“

“’Sleep,’” Henry said, complete with air quotes and uproarious laughter. Blue elbowed him, but she was beaming, too. 

“—so we just wanted to wish you well!” 

“ _They_ did,” Blue said, sticking her thumbs out to point to Gansey and Henry. “I wanted to tell you that you’re missing out.”

“I think,” Gansey said, sounding proud, “that we should all go to Ireland next New Year’s!”

Henry cheered. Blue worked hard to look neutral but failed to hide her excitement. 

Ronan thought about the fact that he and Gansey had never spent a New Year’s Eve together; Ronan had made sure of it, afraid of what he might do at midnight after far too much champagne.

That wouldn’t be a problem, now. Ireland would be fun.

“ _Sláinte_!” Gansey said – or tried to say. “That’s, like, ‘cheers’ in Gaelic, right?”

“Yes!” Henry said, as though he knew anything about Gaelic.

Ronan shook his head at the phone, but he felt himself smiling. They all looked so happy. Gansey looked so alive. The miraculousness of that fact never really left Ronan, even though he knew it came with plenty of loss. 

He was glad Adam made him check his phone. He still hated his phone, but receiving this artifact of happiness was worth using it for a little while. 

Gansey, Henry, and Blue chattered for another minute or so, becoming increasingly unintelligible and increasingly silly, until Blue kissed the phone – kissing things was kind of her thing, now that she was uncursed – and then bid both him and Adam a good night. They fumbled around, trying to end the video with their clumsy fingers, and the screen went black.

Adam was smiling, having watched over his shoulder. “You should text them back.”

“ _You_ should text them back,” Ronan said, handing Adam the phone.

Adam did, wishing them a Happy New Year and telling them to be safe. In immediate response, he received a slew of emojis, and then Adam tucked Ronan’s phone back into his pocket.

“What now?” he asked, having assumed that Ronan had plans for their night.

He was correct. “Now, sledding.”

“Sledding?” Adam asked. “Don’t we need snow for that?”

“No,” he said, grinning.

Adam grinned back, a reward of its own. 

“C’mon,” Ronan said.

“But what about—“ Adam gestured to the stairs, where they had been standing – kissing – before their friends had interrupted. 

“It’s not midnight yet,” Ronan said, and then swung around the corner and out the back door.

Sledding without snow wasn’t easy, but also wasn’t impossible, and Ronan was determined. He’d practiced in the days previous, getting it down to a science. They took turns pushing each other down the hill and racing gravity to the bottom, until their competitiveness landed them both in the same sled, clinging to each other and inevitably tumbling apart at the bottom. 

“Bet you appreciate the fact that I unshitted the yard now, huh,” Ronan said as Adam rubbed dirt and grass out of his hair. Ronan leaned over to brush a leaf away from his bangs.

“I do,” Adam said, laugh on his voice, flush in his cheeks from the cold and the excitement. “I do.” 

Ronan wondered, not for the first time, how he’d ended up here. A year ago to the minute, he was racing the empty streets, equally hoping and dreading running into Kavinsky, hoping a sliver more than dreading that the six pack of beer he drank before he left would end in disaster. 

He hadn’t run into Kavinsky, and he had lived to see the morning. He hadn’t felt it at the time, but he knew now he was lucky.

Maybe not lucky as much as blessed. Watching Adam smile as he rolled down a hill, lit only by the moon and the stars and the fireflies, felt truly divine.

There was a lot to grieve about this year, a lot that wouldn’t be joining them in the new year. Cabeswater, a reprieve for both him and Adam, gone for Gansey. Noah, whose absence he felt daily, an inevitable loss but no less sad. And his mom. It wasn’t so much that he missed her – he’d gotten used to missing her, after all those years of sleep, after being able to only see her in Cabeswater and only for a little while. He had just been hopeful – hopeful of not having to miss her forever. 

Around them, cattle still slept. He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to liberate the dream things from their dreamers. He did know that, even if he did, his mother would stay gone. And that hurt, all the time. 

Sometimes he drank, and it hurt less. But he had Adam here – not numbing the pain so much as counteracting it. Like how a bruise hurt less after it was given a kiss. 

He made the mistake of getting drunk when he knew Adam was coming over, once, on a particularly hard day. He’d known at the time that it was a bad idea and that it was going to start a fight, but he’d done it anyway. He’d wanted Adam to storm out and tell him that he couldn’t be with him, because that would make _sense_. Because the alternative – Adam wanting him back, wanting to be with him, really, truly – _didn’t_. 

Adam didn’t break up with him, though. He refused to come near him (“Your breath reeks like beer, Ronan. Christ, you’re sweating it”), and they did fight, and he did leave, but they talked about it the next day. Adam said that he wasn’t going to be Gansey, wasn’t going to clean up Ronan’s messes. And that he wasn’t going to be around him drunk.

And then it was law. Ronan, even at his most self-destructive, didn’t really want to ruin this. Not now, that time had convinced him that maybe, somehow, Adam did want this as much as he did. Not now, now that having this was _so good_.

Some days, he still didn’t believe it was real. He thought he’d wake up clutching at dreams too big to carry back with him. But, no matter how many times he thought about it, no dream could match the reality of Adam pulling him in for a kiss.

“It’s almost midnight,” Adam said, after a while – after they were covered in dirt and little scrapes, after they had carved sled paths into the patchy grass of the hill. 

“I don’t want to watch the ball drop or whatever,” Ronan said. 

“Me neither,” Adam said. “But the fireworks.”

Right. The fireworks. 

They headed back toward the house and settled in on the porch. Ronan had tossed a handful of blankets nearby, and Adam carefully laid them out like he was making his bed, as though they weren’t covered in dirt and about to make them filthy. Ronan dipped inside to mix powder and milk into mediocre hot chocolate, and then brought it out in one big mug for them to share.

“Time?” Ronan asked, going to check the strings of fuse that guaranteed the fireworks would all go off in succession. Everything was still tied tight and ready to go.

“Two minutes,” Adam said. The porchlight, above and behind him, gave him a halo. He sipped at hot chocolate and gave a contented little sigh from the warmth. “Any last words for this year?”

Ronan turned to face the world. He thought of all the bullshit that this year had brought, about every time he thought they wouldn’t make it. 

He had only one thing to say to this year. Flipping off the horizon and cupping his free hand around his mouth, he yelled, “Fuck you!”

Adam laughed and Ronan’s heart sang. “Agreed,” he said simply. 

Less than a minute left. Ronan dropped down next to Adam, and Adam put his hand on Ronan’s knee so they could both see his watch. 

Fifty seconds. Ronan forced himself, now, to remember the magic. 

Forty seconds. Walking through Cabeswater for the first time with his friends by his side.

Thirty seconds. Watching Blue cross the mirror lake with the last of the light. 

Twenty seconds. Gansey, spluttering to life on the roadside, against all odds.

Ten. _This_.

Adam’s fingers tightened around Ronan’s knee and he momentarily lost count as his heartbeats skipped ahead. He caught back up at—

“Five,” Adam said, voice soft, almost reverent. “Four. Three. Two.”

“One,” Ronan said. 

In the distance, hounds howled in response to fireworks too far away to see. 

Right here, Adam kissed him. It tasted like a promise. It felt like a heart attack. 

Ronan did not want to be anywhere else ever again. 

They kissed into the New Year. The quickest hand on Adam’s watch circled again and again, until Ronan started to get frustrated with the all layers of clothes they were wearing and started wondering how many they could remove without risking frostbite. 

Frostbite seemed worlds away. Inside, he burned. 

That reminded him. “Fireworks,” he managed.

“Mhm,” agreed Adam, breath warm and pupils blown. 

“Fireworks,” Ronan repeated, sounding childish even to his own ears. He darted out into the dark, only now feeling the cold again, and gave a lighter a quick flick against the fuse. Then he tossed himself back down at Adam’s side and watched as the sky came to life.

The fireworks were near-silent – no explosions, only soft whizzing as they climbed into the air, only quiet pops as they stretched across the sky; a blooming of colors, a birthing of stars. These fireworks were not bound to the laws of physics. They scaled up and down, in and out, beating like hearts and rustling like wind, fading out only to reappear again more vibrantly than before. 

The display consumed the sky. Ronan already knew it, so he watched Adam instead. The way the multicolor light played off his cheeks, the reflection and the wonder in his eyes, the slight gape of his mouth, the slight redness of his lips. 

Ronan glanced back at the fireworks and felt a wash of pride. When he closed his eyes and imagined how Adam made him feel, this was it. He hadn’t done it perfectly – he didn’t think he could ever do it perfectly – but it was close. To give that back to Adam in a few minutes of awe was the least Ronan could do. But when Ronan looked back at him, Adam’s eyes had strayed from the light show. 

Adam looked at him like he looked at the fireworks. Ronan felt unworthy and then blessed once more.

“Pay attention,” Ronan said, “They only work once.”

Adam gave him a kiss, somehow both quick and slow, and settled his head against Ronan’s shoulder to watch as the fireworks continued on.

The minutes passed, and then, all at once, the world went quiet again. Smoke drifted by as the wind cleared it away, and Ronan committed this moment to memory. Adam’s cold nose pressed against his neck, Adam’s warm kisses pressed against his throat. The lingering smell of explosives and the clean winter air mixed up with it. The stars, bright like fireworks that had chosen to stay. 

This contentedness, deep in his bones.

Ronan wanted to dream of this, every night. 

“Look,” Adam said, voice quiet. He lifted a slender, steady finger toward the tree-line. 

Three deer appeared there, just at the edge of the porch light’s reach. One of them was the beautiful pale buck, his antlers like branches or roots. He watched them, and they watched him back. A host of words Ronan wanted to say flitted through his mind, none of them near sufficient. Inside his chest, the fireworks were still going. “Adam?”

Adam looked up at him. He, too, looked like he had something to say. Ronan watched his throat bob as he swallowed, and for a second, he felt sure what came next. But the silence dragged a moment longer, and Adam just said, “Happy New Year, Ronan.”

Ronan nodded, his heart swelling in his chest. Yeah. He knew. “Happy New Year,” he said back, and then they kissed again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much (as always) to my good buddy bianca [@lambhugs](http://lambhugs.tumblr.com) for brainstorming help and beta'ing!  
> thanks so much to [@annileigh](http://annileigh.tumblr.com), [@elaphaia](http://elaphaia.tumblr.com), and [@indigoecho](http://indigoecho.tumblr.com) for help with grammar struggles!  
> and thanks so much to _you_ for reading! i hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> any comments or feedback are always super appreciated!! :')
> 
> come cry about the raven kids with me on tumblr at [@gaybluesargent](http://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com)!  
> (this fic is rebloggable [here](http://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com/post/155552237591/fireworks)!)


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